


RatTrApp

by Mithrigil



Category: Der Rattenfänger von Hameln | The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crueltide, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Social Media, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 02:09:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: The plague is digital.





	RatTrApp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



FROM: kkarolyi@hamelnsolutions.org “Kurt Karolyi”  
TO: mmeier@hamelnsolutions.org "Mark Meier”  
CC:  
BCC:  
SUBJECT: Q3 Proposals

Hey Mark,

Hope you’re enjoying Shanghai!

Just got done with all five teams, finally. Full report attached, but you pretty much called it back in February: Lind’s got nothing new, Yang’s on schedule but there’s always another bug, Osman’s hamstrung by Legal, and Elisabet’s presentation was a whole lot of style and nothing of substance. Glad I didn’t make any bets with you, I had high hopes for Osman and that Google refugee of his, but a non-compete is a non-compete and his hands are still tied.

We got one surprise in the bunch, though. The new kid on Sam’s team, the one with the hair? it’s so good I don’t want to put it in print. Check page 46 of the report. I’ve promised Sam a meeting when you get back. This time I WILL make a bet: this will rock your world.

Cheers,  
Karolyi

_Hameln Solutions: A Good Company for the Company you Keep_

* *

Whatever Mark expects going in to the meeting, it’s not Literal Goddamn Rats. He smells them before he sees them: the warm middle school scent of wood chips and the clean herbal of food pellets. Then, the distinctive chittering sound of long teeth clacking against each other and little metal balls tonguing through water dispensers, and little clawed feet scraping plastic walls like static. And once he opens the door, there they are, a row of four clear scientific environments laid out across the conference table where the trophies and snack trays should be like the lyrics of an Alt Rock song. They’re bathed in the white light of the blank flatscreen, and they don’t look up when Mark enters because why would they, but their keeper and their keeper’s keeper both do.

Sam’s been at Hameln since he got started, and beams when Mark and Karolyi enter, not sure which of them to extend his hand to first. “Welcome back,” he settles on, going for Mark.

“Thanks,” Mark says, directing the handshake and taking three seconds to trawl through his memory for the polite Thing to Ask This Subordinate. “How’s the Etsy shop?”

Right one: Sam smiles and cocks his head sideward a little, demurring. “Pretty good, pretty good. My partner just introduced a chocolate sewing kit that’s moving pretty well. How was Shanghai?”

“Punctual.” Mark goes to his seat, which is, perhaps tastefully and probably intentionally, the furthest one from the rat consortium. He looks up, and the mysterious One With the Hair is hanging back with a predictable and acceptable degree of nervousness. “Justin, how’s it going?”

The One With the Hair nods, then sidesteps the conference table until he gets to a point where he can extend his hand to Mark as well. “Good, sir, thank you. Good to see you again.”

Now, programmers with social skills are particularly shiny Pokemon as far as Mark’s concerned, and one of the reasons Hameln hired Justin Feng (reportedly, as Mark wasn’t there) is that he interviewed better than the other equivalently qualified candidates. His – is the word coiffure? – his hairstyle, indicative of the fact that he puts in an effort where other code monkeys fall short, is an unapologetic rainbow spiral perched over his right eye like a squirrel-hole in a tree. In any other company he’d be a diversity initiative’s wet dream, but since this is a tech startup with an eighty-percent-informal culture he’s merely a slightly more distinctive head in the cubicle row.

The rats take advantage of the collective moment of observational silence to escalate their scraping. Mark suppresses a shudder.

“Shall we get started?” Karolyi asks, perching on the cushioned radiator. 

Mark laughs. “Sure. You can start by telling me why there are _actual rats_ in my conference room.”

The ensuing laughter is refreshingly awkward, but the presentation does start. “We thought it would be a good idea to let you try it yourself,” Sam answers, tossing a sidelong glance at Justin that Justin doesn’t catch because he’s making sure the tech is all lined up. “The proof’s in the pudding, after all.”

“All right,” Mark concedes, “so let’s see it.”

The flatscreen livens up, not with a video or bullet points, but with something that looks positively militaristic. It’s a mirror image of the rats in Cage 1, viewed from Justin’s side of the conference table via his phone, in glowing infrared, the concentration of heat around their vibrating jewels of a heart.

“Facial recognition only works if you can see the faces,” Justin starts. “Tautological, sorry, but true. It’s great for preventative measures, and you can definitely make sure to register and keep away from people you already know. But there are already a million easy ways to subvert face recognition tech, using nothing but hairstyles and makeup, and the AI that runs that tech can’t get any smarter without infringing on people’s rights. Facebook’s going down the sh—the toilet, sorry,” Justin grimaces, but Karolyi laughs and waves him on. “Facebook introduced it years ago and people still haven’t decided it’s any less creepy. And more to the point, having an immediately accessible online record of a person’s conduct associated with their face is too easy to abuse. 

“And I thought, well, two things. One, there needs to be a way to get around the face, so that you don’t already have to know the person to protect yourself. And Two, it’s less creepy if you self-select. And with less potential for abuse, and more in line with our mission, too.”

He swipes something on his phone, and the heat signatures of the two rats in Cage 1 now include white text data hovering around them where the whiskers would be if they carried heat.

“Imagine you’re at a bar, and you see someone making a move on a friend of yours. You can’t see his face, because he’s leaning in, and you can’t tell from your friend’s body language if they’re into it or not, but you definitely want to keep an eye on it if something goes wrong. So you take out your phone, and you tag the guy. No face, yet, but you’ve got his heat signature and shape, and that’s not going to change much in the next couple of hours. Any smartphone already has thermographic capabilities, they’re built into the touchscreen: the app just magnifies them while it’s in use. Admittedly, there’s a power issue, but we can get around that later.” One of the rats on the screen flashes electric blue in silhouette, and the whisker reads _FLAG: 1_. “So now you’ve got a thermograph of the person – or in this case, the rat – and he’s logged in your phone. No names and no personal data, nothing that can’t be determined at face value. Based on the heat silhouette the app can also estimate the person’s height and weight from the thermograph – see, over there, the tagged rat weighs around 525 grams and is 7.25 inches long not including the tail, and the database suspects he’s a Fancy Himalayan. That’s good for police reports. 

“I know there are a lot of worries about false accusations based on general data, but the thing is, a heat signature is anything but general. With the thermograph at this strength, your phone can sense a target’s resting heart rate, respiratory rate, skeletal structure, and skull shape. On top of that, if the lighting is good enough to take a picture you can also get an accurate assessment of a person’s clothing and accessories. Once you put these two things together you’re no longer profiling, you’re _creating_ a temporary profile, and you’re able to do it from a safe distance, and without infringing on the rights of the person you’re concerned about. All of this, clothing, height, weight, sex, that’s public, but not general.

“If that’s not enough for your comfort, you can either try to get to a better vantage point to get a look at his face, and add that to the data, or see if someone else in the room with you has him tagged at the same time. Sam?”

Sam takes out his phone too, and focuses on Cage 1 from his side of the table. The screen now reads _FLAG:2_ around this particular rat, and since the face is visible from Sam’s angle the screen updates with an emoji, indicating that facial data is now available.

“Like that,” Justin says. “No one’s done anything illegal, since there aren’t any names attached yet. But now you know that you’re not the only one watching this rat, and that there’s data on it. You can save the state to your phone in case you have to file a police report later, or delete it if it turns out to be nothing. Now here comes the good part. Karolyi, is the door closed?”

Karolyi cranes over the table, to double check, and says, “Yep.”

Justin smiles, puts down his phone, and starts prying the lids off the rat cages.

One by one, to Mark’s increasing amusement and mild horror, he sets the rats down on the conference table, willy-nilly and shuffled around like the cups in a shell game, except wriggling and alive and _rats_.

“Last time it took me four minutes to put them all back right,” Karolyi explains, grinning ear to ear. 

Sam passes his phone into Mark’s hand. “Have fun, boss,” he says.

 _Yes,_ Mark thinks. _Yes, I think I shall._

* *

_RatTrApp_ gets its unofficial launch at the company Christmas party. The battery and heat issues are mostly resolved, on late-model phones at least, and once the alpha tests in Warsaw are done it will be beta-tested in Berlin, Munich, and Paris. If all goes well, there will be a staged “incident” in which RatTrApp catches the creep and saves the day at some point in early February, with the buzz to hit Paris when the particularly rich and gullible Americans are doing their Valentines vacations.

Justin Feng’s Christmas bonus is equivalent to a full three month’s salary.

* *

> **KNOWN #METOO PIG GETS ROASTED STILL IN THE PEN**
> 
> PARIS. At the _Les Derniers_ nightclub in the 12th Arrondissement, a new app nipped a potential sexual assault in the bud, perhaps even saving a young woman’s life.
> 
> Sara*, 19, an American dual-citizen in Paris for the first time since her childhood, was out with her Parisian cousins after a day sightseeing at the Bastille. They settled in at _Les Derniers_ for drinks and dancing, and, as expected, the potential for liaisons was not just accepted, but high for the group of attractive young women. Sara soon found herself attracting the attention of a man, and like many young people they became acquainted on the dance floor.
> 
> However, Felicie*, one of Sara’s older cousins, smelled a rat, or perhaps, a pig. She took advantage of a new German app, _RatTrApp,_ to put a cyber-tag on the man putting the moves on her cousin. Since she could not see his face, it took a few minutes for another app user in the club to corroborate Felicie’s findings, and supplement the tag with a photo. To Felicie’s horror, after running a Google reverse-image search on the man’s photo, she discovered the man attempting to seduce her cousin was author Philippe Riviere, subject of a #balanceTonPorc expose last year by poet Yasmin Amatuzzo. 
> 
> Riviere and Amatuzzo are currently engaged in a defamation suit, as Amatuzzo alleges that he harassed her throughout their stay at a writers’ retreat in Poland in 2010, when Amatuzzo was just 18 years old, and Riviere disputes this. Regardless, Felicie wanted to be sure her cousin had nothing to do with this man, and intervened.
> 
> If Riviere had gone quietly, perhaps this would not be news, but Riviere lashed out at Felicie, and violently resisted the nightclub staff when they attempted to escort him from the premises. By the time the police arrived, they were prepared to charge Riviere with assault. Both young women emerged unscathed, but one _Dernier_ employee was later treated for mild injuries.
> 
> _RatTrApp_ , developed by tech security company Hameln Solutions just south of Hannover in Germany, aims to put the means to preemptively protect its customers in their own hands. Especially concerned with the right to privacy, RatTrApp doesn’t have a central database of its accused, relying only on the abilities of those simultaneously using the app to “tag and flag” potentially disruptive or dangerous individuals. Other Hameln Solutions apps like _PinDropp_ , which tracks changes to your living environment over time, can be used in conjunction with _RatTrApp_ to allow users to record and report potential crimes to the authorities.
> 
> “I’m testing this app, but I honestly hoped I’d never have to really use it,” Felicie said. “Now that I have, I’m so, so thankful.”
> 
> _Una Mains, Jan Benoit, and Lucas Bernard contributed to this report._
> 
> _*Names have been changed to protect the innocent._

* *

FROM: kkarolyi@hamelnsolutions.org “Kurt Karolyi”  
TO: mmeier@hamelnsolutions.org "Mark Meier”  
CC:  
BCC:  
SUBJECT: *URGENT*: Alphabet DE

Mark,

GREAT NEWS! The Google people can meet you at the conference in Istabul. Jessika’s updated your itinerary.

Good luck!  
Karolyi

_Hameln Solutions: A Good Company for the Company you Keep_

* *

Over some of the worst coffee Mark’s ever had, it turns out Alphabet doesn’t just want RatTrApp: it wants the company.

It’s not the biggest acquisition Alphabet’s ever made, but it’s definitely the biggest sale Mark Meier’s ever participated in, and he comes out 700 million Euros richer. The catch is that Hameln Solutions no longer technically exists.

Which means transfer for most, and severance for some. It’s expected that three quarters of the Hameln staff will make the transition to Google, and the rest will argue about it, take a check and stay out of the game for six months to a year. To the tune of 700 million Euros, that’s a perfectly acceptable loss.

* *

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Justin Feng says.

Mark’s jaw drops in slack disbelief. “I thought this was every programmer’s dream.”

The rainbow in Justin’s hair is neon now, and in the halogen of the conference room it’s bleeding into the sweat at his hairline, and seriously a part of his scalp is fuchsia, and Mark cannot help but be reminded of cartoons about to blow the tops of their own skulls off in rage. “That’s not the issue,” Justin says. “You’re going to kill my product.”

“It’s not yours,” Mark says, because the rest of that statement is even more preposterous. “And if anyone can make it _complete_ , it’s Google. They’ll be able to get over the legal hurdles and get us the database we need to make _RatTrApp_ truly effective. You’ve seen the news, kid. Every time it works, it works because the user’s cross-referenced it with data from Google.”

“Data that Google got without consent. Or _crowd-sourced_. Or worse, data that’s only true because a lot of hypothetical people decide it’s true. Do you read any news that doesn’t mention the company name? Because I do, and Google’s not for finding facts anymore, it’s for making more money for Google.”

“So’s RatTrApp,” Mark points out.

“Not the way I designed it it’s not.”

“You’re not the only one that designed it.”

“Fine. I’m not the only one. But the one that works is built on mine, and if you’re going to waste the only ethical self-security app in the world because the Americans want to turn it into another data-mining tool, who the fuck am I to stop you?”

Mark, who doesn’t think he has to answer to upstart shitheads kids like this one, now or ever, simply slides a copy of Justin’s contract across his desk, non-compete page up, in Justin’s general direction.

“One hundred thousand Euros,” Mark says.

“One million,” Justin corrects.

Mark simply shakes his head and points at a clause on the non-compete page, _severance may not exceed one year’s salary except in the case of damages_. “One hundred thousand,” he repeats. “And you shut up for an entire goddamn year.”

It is Justin’s jaw’s turn to hang open, the same mute O as his eyes and the vortex of hair over them.

He gets up and walks out of the office.

By the time Mark is done with the rest of his meetings for the day, Justin’s workstation is already clear, as if he has never there.

* *

The acquisition itself passes without a hiccup. Why wouldn’t it?

* *

FROM: kkarolyi@gooqle.de “Kurt Karolyi”  
TO: mmeier@gooqle.de "Mark Meier”  
CC:  
BCC:  
SUBJECT: UPDATE: Integrations

Hey Mark,

Before you get back, a quick update on the RatTrApp V.2.01.19 rollouts:

Permatag: They’ve ruled that it now takes ten users making the same tag for it to appear in the top 20 on the target’s profile. After that it takes a hundred downvotes to get the tag taken down, or ten user complaints to freeze the tag for 24 hours. They’re thinking of putting in a tag rating system instead, but that’ll take time and they really want this to drop before September so they can get school samples.

Autolink: Now that it’s been storing photos and known locations, users can co-create profiles for anyone they tag and flag, and the profiles support google images and social media links. It’s a little wild west wikia right now, but since they’re anonymously created it should still protect the users. Alpha testing just would up and they decided beta’s going to be in Philadelphia, Melbourne, and Munich.

Mugshot: Alpha testing just started on this in San Francisco. The police department’s been cooperative. 

Hope Babylonstoren’s treating you well!

Cheers,  
Karolyi

_Google Securities DE-Vision_

* *

> **NATIONAL PARK FIRES MAN FOR ALLEGED PRESENCE AT ANTI-IMMIGRATION RALLIES**
> 
> INGOLSTADT. Park Ranger Aran Kramer was as surprised as his superiors to discover he had been at at a Nationalist rally. According to his passport, he has never been to the Netherlands. But according to RatTrApp, he has not only been to the Netherlands, he has been “tagged and flagged” at Voorpost meetings in Zwolle, Rotterdam, and The Hague.
> 
> When a user of RatTrApp scans Kramer’s body from any direction, it immediately associates him with a profile that doesn’t share his face. The profile, which does not mention his name but is linked to multiple photos of this incorrect individual, uses known dog-whistle terms to signal that this man is associated with the Voorpost and other Nationalist movements. Kramer’s superiors discovered this profile when using the app at a technology briefing, in front of Kramer’s colleagues and subordinates. 
> 
> As such organizations are outlawed in Germany, the National Park Service was well within its rights to fire and report Kramer for this suspected allegiance. However, Kramer disputes these allegations, and furthermore the app profile is associating him with another man’s face. Because RatTrApp allows users to state where they made these tags, it is possible that a person with Kramer’s skeletal composition was at such events and the App appends this profile to Kramer regardless of his history, but RatTrApp says it is not likely. 
> 
> The National Park Service has reportedly offered to turn the firing to an unpaid suspension while the issue is resolved, but Kramer has instead accepted his withdrawal from the company. “I can’t face my co-workers, knowing they’d think this of me,” he said. “I’m a child of immigrants. I’d never be caught dead at one of those meetings, and I can’t believe there are those out there who would have this be the first thing they know about me. It plain isn’t true.”

* *

> **SOCIAL MEDIA SUICIDE: AREA TEEN KILLED BY RATTRAPP**
> 
> PHILADELPHIA. Junior Claudia Osborne slit her wrists in the pool at Carver Central High School. She was sixteen. Police have ruled her death a suicide, confirmed by a both a physical letter and a queued post on her Tumblr, delivered the morning after her death.
> 
> A member of her school’s diving team and a strong student, Osborne ran for Class President last month. She soon found herself at the center of a social media harassment campaign centered around RatTrApp, a platform where users can create profiles for other people and attach them to the individual’s scan. According to Osborne’s suicide letter, her classmates used the app to attach vulgarities to Osborne any time she was scanned, insulting her body and her race, and implying a sexual relationship with one of her teachers. After withdrawing from the election, Osborne’s grades and social presence suffered, ultimately culminating in her death.
> 
> According to Osborne’s friend, diving team captain and senior Mikaela Ube, she first became aware of the problem when she downloaded the app that the freshmen and sophomores were “all talking about”. She then used it to scan Osborne, and discovered that Osborne already had a profile, containing all of the aforementioned invective and hate speech.
> 
> Her parents and teachers were not unaware of the issue. Osborne writes of bringing the harassment to the attention of Carver Central’s guidance counselors and administrative staff multiple times, and even incorporated social media awareness into her campaign for Class President. But because the profiles on RatTrApp are created anonymously, it is near-impossible to determine the creator, and furthermore because the harmful tags were formed by consensus it could very well have been the work of dozens, even hundreds, of students acting in tandem. Other apps, such as Snapchat, where information is sent and then near-instantaneously deleted, may have been used to coordinate the effort, leaving no trace of the conspiracy.
> 
> Ube also recalls her and Osborne’s mutual effort trying to contact Google itself to get the profile taken down. After receiving ten complaints of false or harmful information, Google froze the profile for 24 hours to investigate, and removed some of the more overtly harmful tags, specifically the racist and sexist terminology. But other tags remained after the purge, along with all of the doctored photographs that still contained some of the same hate speech built in to the image, because those were not detected as violating the Terms of Service.
> 
> “If this is reality now,” Osborne wrote, in the letter she left folded on top of her shoes at the side of the pool, “then what I think I am doesn’t matter. So I’ll just not be here.”
> 
> At the blood-tinged pool, when fellow students held up their phones at the corpse, no data was shown.
> 
> Her family was not available for comment.

* *

> **“THIS ONE’S MINE”: STAKING A DIGITAL CLAIM WITH RATTRAPP**
> 
> PLUGGEDIN: Pick-up Artistry is far from dead, and now there’s a realspace tool to help those who play the Game to stake their Claim: security app RatTrApp.
> 
> Yes. Really.
> 
> “RatTrApp was created so females could pick out guys who they thought were making trouble for them,” says entrepreneur Linus V., who lives in the Mission District and credits himself and his friends with retooling the app’s features to suit their noble calling. “So it’s beautifully ironic that we’re now using it to pick them out instead.”
> 
> And it works too: users have now created unique “claim tags” that they apply to women they’ve scanned. It’s like the Midwestern Hobo Code of _Mad Men_ fame: if in your travels you’ve come across a tag that starts with @==D, followed by a username and number sequence, you’ve found a girl who didn’t say no.
> 
> It doesn’t stop there, either; users are starting to rate their experiences. Since tags with explicit language are now policed by parent company Google, the claim tags resort to the euphemistic for how far the women will go, such as “four on the floor” for how many drinks it took to get the woman to agree to sex, or “team player()()” for those who have reputedly engaged in threesomes. Others warn away aspirants from the frigid and the crazy: the “*Elsa*” tag has been appended to many a supposedly uncrackable stone cold Bay Area Princess. And if you find a tag that says “PITA”, it’s short for Progressing In The Artistry, or, colloquially, something that would now be considered explicit and thus untaggable – and it means a @==D tag is soon to follow, through the digital (and literal) backdoor.
> 
> Linus and his cohort are keeping a record of the registered unique users and have shared it on forums across the manosphere. “We want this to go beyond California,” he says. “It’s really leveled the playing field around here, and we can only hope it keeps spreading.”

* *

Karolyi is there to meet Mark right when the plane touches down. The airport smells like a certain sort of hell, and even the relief of breathing live air can’t stop Mark’s heart from pounding, or erase the sweat on Karolyi’s hairline.

“It’s worse, isn’t it,” Mark says, and it’s not a question.

“You didn’t pay for WiFi,” Karolyi guesses, and that’s not a question either.

Considering 40,000 feet above the earth’s surface is the only place that Mark can realistically pretend the Internet doesn’t exist, he manages to only feel a little guilty about not answering that.

Karolyi hands over his phone.

 **RATTRAPP LINKED TO INTERNATIONAL CHILD-TRAFFICKING OPERATION** , the headline reads in plain German.

The first line after that sets the count of the missing at three hundred and fourteen, so far.

The next reveals the tag the traffickers used to signal that the child could plausibly be taken: “lokator”.

Mark tastes the airplane beer building up in the back of his throat.

* *

“I didn’t expect you to call,” Justin Feng answers, without any salutation whatsoever.

“Hello, Justin,” Mark tries, because if he can’t be polite, even now, to this person he fully intends to beg for help, he’s worth nothing. “How have you been?”

“Ask my lawyer,” Justin answers, and hangs up.

* *

The headlines only get worse from there. Civilians in the United States are using the app to report suspected illegal immigrants to ICE. Twenty more high school and college students across the world attempt or commit suicide citing social media abuse, and RatTrApp in particular. A restaurant in Belgium refuses service to a former felon, as denoted by the app, and a civil suit nightmare ensues. A terrorist cell is using it to ferret out foreign spies and journalists. Another cell, in another country, is treating it as a silent handshake and recruitment tool.

The “lokator” tag disappears, and so do the children under it.

The app is a patchwork of fixes and deletions and still the world finds ways around every one. Eventually, the app is pulled from its stores completely, though its clones remain, for those who still care to use them.

By the time Alphabet says it will accept Mark’s resignation, it’s almost a relief.

The severance package is reasonable. Generous, even, considering.

* *

Kurt Karolyi resigns as well, of course. It takes him a great deal more time to clean out his office than Mark, considering he actually used it. The last box is just about ready to go, and he bundles it up in his arms, balancing it with his attache as he sidesteps out the door.

“I do wish you’d come to us sooner,” an Alphabet executive is saying to his companion as they stroll toward a conference room nearby. “It’s going to be hell to contain.”

“I was under a non-compete,” a young male voice explains, attached to a head of hair dyed all three primary colors plus green, like the Google Chrome logo. “You know how that goes.”

“Too true,” the executive laughs, a little nervous, as he leads the young man into the glass-walled room.

Choking back a snarl, Karolyi heads for the elevator, and hits the button with his elbow, tapping his heel until it arrives.

As the doors open, he is greeted with four interns, each holding a clear plastic cage containing two Fancy Himalayan rats.

He looks back at the glass conference room doors. Behind them, Justin Feng meets his eyes, and cocks his head with a tight, dark smirk across his jaw.

* *


End file.
